“Who lives, who dies, who tells your tale?” (Hamilton). You and I both cry, we both bleed, and we will both die. One critical lens that piqued my interest the most while reading William Shakespeare's Hamlet was the postcolonial lens, especially because of the play's parallels with Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton. This lens is relevant to Hamlet because it highlights the abuse of political power, injustice, and conspiracy; consequently, these factors fuel Hamlet's desire for revenge without regard for justice to kill Claudius. By comparison, Hamilton is a commentary on America's past through the prism of the American present that uses an all-African-American and Latino cast to tell its story. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayTherefore, using Hamilton as a catalyst to explain Hamlet through a postcolonial lens allows me to understand how Hamlet's desires are influenced by his "slave-like" oppression by a higher power. In other words, I see the Hamlet's speeches, actions and words as an attempt to avenge his father's death as a result of the ethical dilemma taking place in his head “Can we talk about race in Hamlet?”, author Peter Erickson addresses the. idea of race in Hamlet and argues that “the greater capacity accorded to race in Jacobean culture does not mean that race was completely absent under Elizabeth… so in line with her Elizabethan environment, it only affects indirectly and her racial discourse therefore remains latent, implied.” However, I argue that there is a way to prominently intertwine Hamlet with race, and I discovered a version of Hamlet that features an all-black cast similar to that seen in Hamilton, and thus my perspective on Hamlet has been cast in a new light. light. Peter Erickson asks two questions. “How do we define race for the purposes of this investigation? Is there a historically valid concept of race that can be applied to Hamlet?” Erickson uses essays by PEH Hair and Robin Law and David Richardson of Oxford History of the British Empire and uses their ideas and approaches in his essay on Hamlet, including British involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. The two ethnic references that Erickson focuses on in his postcolonial analysis are Hamlet's parenthetical phrase "if the rest of my fortunes were turned Turk with me" and when Hamlet compares his real father to Claudius, "Couldst thou depart to feed upon this fair mountain, / And cue on this moor?”. Furthermore, both quotations carry racial connotations; Hamlet's minor mention of Turk and Moor is symbolic of whiteness "the association between whiteness and vulnerability is one of the underlying motifs that Hamlet dramatizes." Whiteness is accessible as a lost and irrecoverable ideal. This same ideal is what Claudius actively participates in. it is a horrible disfigurement of white identity that makes loss of stature a matter of skin condition.” In contrast, the notion of white identity is further catapulted by Hamlet's assumption that his father's murderer is black: the Robust Pyrrhus, he whose black arms, black as his purpose, resembled the night, when he lay reclining on the menacing horse, has now this black and fearful complexion is smeared with sadder heraldry. Furthermore, the racial insinuation of Claudio as dark follows the black and white atmosphere. I believe this fuels the fear that the idea of white identity will only progress.
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